[olug] dd --- the coolest utility ever

[Adam Haeder]

Chris Garrity wrote:

>         Is it possible to image a smaller drive onto a larger drive, without losing
> space? I.e. I've got a drive that's 17G, with one filesystem on one partition,
> and I wnat to image it onto a drive that's 20G---but I'll lose 3G, correct? I
> think I am because the filesystem on the original disk only covers 17G, and the
> new disk is 20G. Am I wrong, is there a way to image over a existing partition
> (drive) onto a larger one without losing space?
>
>         If I copy a smaller partition (or drive) onto a larger one, the original
> filesystem won't account for the extra room at the new location. Or am I
> completely wrong?
>
>         I'd like to image a disk (one partition) off a 17G and onto a 20G, but don't
> see how it'll work. Be really awesome if it did :)

To do this, you need a tool that can resize a partition. I've always used Partition
Magic from PowerQuest. Fips can do it too, I used to use that back in the day. Didn't
Mandrake have something called DiskDrake that was supposed to be able to dynamically
resize partitions without losing data?
If you use dd to copy a 17G drive to a 20G drive, you'll have 3 gig left over on the
new drive. You can use one of the above named tools to resize a partition to
incorporate the 3G, or create a new 3G partition and mount it somewhere (like /opt/ or
/usr/local or something.)

dd is a sweet tool. I keep images of all my floppies on my disk with a simple
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=~/disk_images/this_floppy_name.img

Adam


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